One of the state’s cannabis retailers is encouraging customers to recycle the plastic that encases certain cannabis products by offering them a $4 pre-rolled joint for every piece of packaging they return.
In the heavily regulated cannabis industry, nearly every product is required to come in child-resistant packaging that is typically made of plastic. Most of that plastic is not recyclable and ends up in the trash or tossed on the ground.
“Living in the city of Boston, I saw these [pre-roll] tubes all over the streets, they’re everywhere,” said Ture Turnbull, who with Wes Ritchie owns Tree House Craft Cannabis dispensaries in Pepperell and Dracut. “So we looked at what needed to be done, what the industry was doing to address this, what the policies around this were, and what opportunity there was for us to do right.”
Tree House’s recycling program incentivizes consumers to bring back their used packaging to the dispensary. Specifically, customers can return the plastic pop-top tubes that hold pre-rolled joints and the square-lidded containers that hold marijuana flower. For each piece of packaging customers return, they can buy a pre-rolled joint for $4—a price that yields savings ranging from $4 to $8 depending on what joint is on offer.
The brand of the pre-roll currently being offered is the company’s own Yellow Brick Road. Since May, when Tree House started the program, customers have returned more than 6,000 pieces of packaging and the company has offered an equivalent number of $4 pre-rolls.
“We literally had to put our money where our mouth is to create this incentive program because it has a monetary hit to us, but a benefit to the consumer, and that’s the only way we could actually see it taking off, to incentivize it,” said Turnbull. “This is the first try at a serious program that says: Let’s take the plastic and recycle it. Let’s take this environmental concern seriously.”
Tree House uses the recycled packaging in two ways. If the packaging is intact, it’s reused to package new products. If not, the company commissions artwork for its dispensaries that incorporates the plastic.
Hellbound and Down 